France Football have released the rules that it will apply to decide the Ballon d'Or should the voting be tied for the first place. They have confirmed that tied scores will be decided by the most first-place votes, before the magazine's editor-in-chef decides the winner.
Per the newly-revealed regulations, should the initial vote be deadlocked, the scorers will begin breaking the tie by examining the first-place votes. If the tie still persists, the scorers will look at the second-place votes, and then the third-place votes, and so on until the players are distinguished.
If at any point the players have the same amount of votes at any position on the ballot, the editor-in-chief of France Football will determine the winner.
Why ballot voting is more important than ever
For fans that spend months each year waging the annual debate as to who truly deserves the Ballon d'Or, this voting system demonstrates just how incredibly fine the competition for the prestigious prize truly is. The men's Ballon d'Or is voted on by 100 international journalists representing the top-ranked FIFA nations.
Each of these voters must choose 10 players, whose votes are awarded in descending order from 15 points for the first-place vote down to one point for the 10th-place vote.
The cascading tie-breaker system means that a juror's decision for a fourth, fifth, or even tenth-place spot could theoretically decide the Ballon d'Or winner if the top vote-getters are locked in a dead heat. Voters can no longer choose their favorite 10 players and leave the math to do the talking. To win a Ballon d'Or, a player needs to finish first in the eyes of voters around the globe, and every voter must examine every player on their short list of 10.
Winning a Ballon d'Or demands complete attention from every voter, on every player, not just the head of the short list.
The ultimate tie-breaker
Perhaps the most interesting part of the procedure is the single most important vote in the book. Should the votes still be deadlocked after all other votes are considered, the editor-in-chief of France Football will decide the winner.
The rules of the Ballon d'Or award are designed to seem very scientific, but the nature of the award itself is actually very subjective. By confirming the absolute authority of the editor-in-chief in the rules, France Football makes sure that it will always have the ability to decide the award in any situation, and the prestige of the prize is far too important to ever let that power go unused.
Though it is very unlikely that the votes would ever be tied enough to let the editor-in-chief choose the winner, the fact that they are prepared to do so anyway is an interesting admission of the potential for error in the voting.
With the competition growing fiercer every year, fans of the men's game should expect the voting to always be very tight, and though it is statistically improbable that two candidates will ever have identical votes at every position, having the procedure decided in advance gives assurance to the result.
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